AMD Radeon R9 270X vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q vs AMD Radeon R9 290X

AMD Radeon R9 270X

The AMD Radeon R9 270X is an upper middle-class graphics card for desktop PCs, that has been presented in October 2013. It is based on the "Curacao" GPU and manufactured in 28 nanometers. The card offers 1280 shader units and a 256-bit memory interface (2 GB GDDR5, 179 GB/s).

Architecture

The R9 270X uses the same chip as the older Radeon HD 7870. Curacao, former known as Pitcairn, is based on the GCN architecture and offers 1280 shaders, 80 TMUs and 32 ROPs. Compared to the HD 7870, the R9 270X clocks slightly higher at 1050 MHz for the Core (max. Boost) and 1400 MHz (5600 MHz effective) for the memory. The 270X supports DirectX 12 (FL 11_1), but lacks the new Trueaudio feature.

Performance

Depending on game and settings, the performance of the Radeon R9 270X is similar to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 760. Therefore, even the fastest mobile GPUs like the GeForce GTX 780M are outperformed slightly. Demanding games like Metro: Last Light can be played fluently in 1920 x 1080 pixels and maximum settings. In some cases, even higher resolutions or additional AA/AF are possible.

Features

The R9 270X supports well-known features like Eyefinity, but also some innovations such as a new turbo mode. Depending on power consumption and temperature, the core can be boosted up to 1050 MHz. However, there is no offical base clock respectively a lower limit.

Power Consumption

Thanks to dynamic clock adjustments and the Zero Core technology, the R9 270X is very energy efficient while idle. Under load, the card is rated at a typical power consumption of 180 watts.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with the Max-Q design is a mobile high-end GPU from the Pascal series. It is designed for thin and light laptops and about 10-15% slower than a regular GTX 1060 for laptops based on the cooling capabilities. The base frequency (1063-1265 MHz) is also much lower than on the regular GTX 1060 (1506 MHz, at least -16%) and the Boost (1341-1480 MHz) is also much lower compared to 1708 MHz (at least -13%) for the regular GTX 1060. The memory clock, however, is identical.

The clock is not the only difference compared to the regular GTX 1060 though. The drivers for the Max-Q version were optimized for efficiency (and not performance; only for Max-Q models), there are optimized voltage converters for 1V operation, high-end cooling methods, and a 40 dB limit for the fan noise (with clock adjustments to ensure this at all times).

Features

The GP106 chip is produced in 16nm FinFET at TSMC and offers a range of new features, like DisplayPort 1.4 (ready), HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) and improved H.265 video de- and encoding (PlayReady 3.0). A list of improvements and features can be found in our article on the Pascal architecture.

The power consumption of the Max-Q design is notably lower than the normal GTX 1060 for laptops and ranges between 60 and 70 Watt (TGP) according to Nvidia.

AMD Radeon R9 290X

The AMD Radeon R9 290X is a high-end single-GPU graphics card for desktop PCs, that has been presented in October 2013. It is based on the "Hawaii" GPU and manufactured in 28 nanometers. The card offers 2816 shader units and a 512-bit memory interface (4 GB GDDR5, 320 GB/s at 5000 MHz).

Architecture

The Hawaii chip is based on a slightly revised version of the GCN architecture. Among other things, the front-end has been doubled and optimized, size and speed of the L2 cache increased and the memory interface widened. Furthermore, the R9 290X offers more shaders (2816), TMUs (176) and ROPs (64) than the previous top model Radeon HD 7970. In addition to the higher performance, the 290X supports new features like DirectX 12 (FL 12_0).

Performance

Depending on game and settings, the performance of the Radeon R9 290X is similar to the Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan. Therefore, even the fastest mobile GPUs like the GeForce GTX 780M are outperformed by about 50 percent. Demanding games like Metro: Last Light can be played fluently in 2560 x 1600 pixels and maximum settings. In some cases, even the UltraHD resolution of 3840 x 2160 (4K) is possible.

Features

The R9 290X supports well-known features like Eyefinity, but also some innovations such as True Audio and a new turbo mode. Depending on power consumption and temperature, the core can be boosted up to 1000 MHz. However, there is no offical base clock respectively a lower limit.

Power Consumption

Thanks to dynamic clock adjustments and the Zero Core technology, the R9 290X is very energy efficient while idle. Under load, the card is rated at a typical power consumption of 250 watts.